Quote:
Originally Posted by El Whacko
Thanks, man, I have told my CO my goals and he said he would help me accomplish them to the fullest. I plan on being an officer on a submarine, and I hope to go to the Naval Academy later in life. Our chief had signed up like maybe two weeks ago for the academy and on Saturday he told us that he had just received an Army ROTC scholarship at Purdue, another kid in the unit before me had also made chief and signed up to the academy but he ended up going to West Point instead, lol.
Am I seeing a recurring theme here?
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OK, I think you may have some mis-conceptions.
If your unit has "career days", be a pain and try to get a submarine officer to attend.
Buy them lunch, do what you have to in order to get a one-to-one sit-down meeting. I'm not 100% certain (I left the Navy in 1993), but being an officer on a US sub means that you graduated from "Nuc School" (aka Prototype). Getting to Nuc school as an officer can be tricky. Off the top of my head, you'll want to have good grades
and at least a BS in Mechanical Engineering with a heavy concentration in Physics and Thermodynamics. This is the tricky part, the Navy prefers to train their Nucs their own way. You don't
have to have a BS/ME but you DO need an outstanding GPA. Understand that I'm
not talking about "party on Thursday-to-Sunday" college. This is a very narrow pathway that looks a lot like a wire over a canyon.
Aside from being the Permanent Supply Officer, this is the only path I know of to getting gold Dolphins. Most of the junior (NUC trained) officers I knew didn't even
want a shot at being the Captain, they wanted to be the ENG more than anything. There's some twisted logic behind this and it takes a long time to understand it.
Just a quick disclaimer. I enlisted about six months after I earned a BS/EE and AS/EET degrees. I enlisted mostly because the civilian industry went into a severe downturn and I needed to get the experience for when things got better.
I had asked about OCS when I enlisted and my recruiter said it was better (in his view) if I went enlisted first and let a CO nominate me for OCS. This turned out to be really good advice, by the time the skipper of my first boat asked me if I wanted to go, I already knew that I didn't and I was lucky there was another guy in the crew who wanted it more. It still took a lot of diplomacy to turn down "the old man" without having him go ballistic.
Service Academy vs ROTC/NROTC- The Service Academies don't train future lieutenants, they train future Admirals and Generals.
This will make more sense later. If your goal is WEPS on a fast attack, there are easier ways of getting there than going through Annapolis. If your goal is getting your own personal flag and staff car, then you want "the big ring".
You should also understand the difference between Line Officer and Staff Officer. To you, it could make a lot of difference. To the Navy, it makes NO difference and they will assign you where they need you to be. This is known as "needs of the government" and its a double-edged blade. You can use it to
your benefit but it can just as easily knock your legs out from under you.
Just to cut it short for now, there are other folks on this forum who have old uniforms and poopie suits hanging in their closet. You want their opinions as well.
Just understand that a LOT of this comes down to being prepared plus being in the right place at the right time.